I really feel tremendously bad for kids and parents of kids who have exams in January. Those kids never get a break! One of our criteria for colleges was that the semester ends in December, and I do say “our” because I was pretty adamant about this. About this December break…my D has so many plans, and I have so many plans for her; I hope all the plans don’t end up getting blown up because she has to work on apps!
@glido I have a S23 too!
Agreed @melvin123. Because D’s schedule hasn’t really given her a December break in HS, she has really been adamant about that as well.
I’m 45. My youngest is 6 (DS30), 12 years older than big brother S18.
Congratulations about your daughter @MACmiracle !
S18 has finals today and tomorrow for his year-long semester classes. Then he’s off until early January.
I would hate it if the semester didn’t end until after the break. So glad ours ends before.
Senior stress has been off an on for us, too. Just finished a big step for senior year; turned in her thesis outline for their capstone project. A thesis on Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and Plato’s Republic that will need to be defended in front of a panel of thesis advisors and teachers at the school, including taking questions from the general audience. I already told her I won’t be asking any questions because I have zero clue what she’s even talking about!
S took his DE Gov final last night and got an A in the class. His final dress rehearsal for a Christmas Carol is tonight, with performances on Thurs, Fri and Sat. His HS finals start Monday.
DH is scheduled to head to Santa Barbara, just north of Ventura, for a week to help his parents move. Not a great time to be heading that direction from where we are. Not a great time for elderly people to be moving, either. :-S
The DE class S wants to take next semester is already waitlisted, and S can’t register for 6 more days. If he can get on the waitlist, there will probably be enough attrition to get him in, but he might have to think about backups if he doesn’t make the waitlist.
A bit of news for us - D was accepted to Barrett! And in other news, she just didn’t get around to doing her Dean’s Honor or PT projects for Tulane, which pretty much puts it out of contention. I’m OK with it - she has plenty of good options, but I know that is the one that she’s had her eye on for a couple years now. We’ll see if she gets her Pitt scholarship app in. The motivation is basically gone over here…
S18’s semester doesn’t end until about Jan 20th! It’s the worst because he has a ton of projects getting assigned now that are due within a week of vacation ending. 
@Gertrudemcfuzz congrats on Barrett!
The new buzzword in schools around our town is “design thinking” to improve schools and reduce stress. And one example is that this spring D’s HS will be trying out two new bell schedules for two 2-week periods. Both schedules will carve out a couple 30-minute periods where students can use them to advocate for themselves with their teachers, do homework, etc. The two 30-minute periods will be adjacent to their lunch periods, which give them something like 75 minutes of flex/lunch. One schedule has them going to school most days at 9:45 AM too, where currently they start at 9:45 just Thursdays right now. The other new schedule is a bit wacky with different starting times almost every day.
The “design thinking” has been going on for several years in the K-8 district in order to lower stress and give kids more options for classes, more hands-on project based learning and free time. Stanford has a “d.school” and the local districts have been meeting with Stanford’s d.school for years helping make changes to enhance childhood education and achieve a reduction in student stress levels.
My involvement with grad school apps for my older son last year was limited to … paying the fees. I tried reading something and after the first few sentences realized that I was in over my head. Fortunately, he knew what he was doing or at least the schools seemed to think so.
@GertrudeMcFuzz congratulations on Barrett! Maybe it’s OK for your D to not be enthused about any other apps…
@RoonilWazlib99 that schedule is just awful! Your S isn’t going to have much of a break at all. 
The stress must be getting to me because I did something really silly. For the very first time, at littlest D’s request, I went out and bought a 12 foot Christmas inflatable. We rushed to put it up before anyone got home this afternoon to surprise them. I agreed because I thought we needed a laugh.
H said he didn’t think it was our house and almost drove past it. D20 was just in shock. I’m waiting for D18 to come home.
If my family doesn’t appreciate it, it will be entertaining for the little ones next door and across the street. And my mom will get a kick out of it for sure.
@GertrudeMcFuzz Congrats on Barrett! It’s a fantastic option. She really liked it on her visit, right?
@GertrudeMcFuzz Congrats on Barrett!! Yeah it was a struggle to get the Pitt Chancellor app in…especially knowing it’s so limited. I think 6 to 8 per year only and quite a few kids on CC were giving the invitation. She managed to get it done but I fear it was uninspired…they were tough questions to answer in 250 words :(.
@MACmiracle I laughed at your H driving past the house!
My D had to apply for grad school (pharmacy) after freshman year of college. Good thing she just had to apply to the university she was already at. She could walk to her interview.
@AmyBeth68 good luck to your D! I’m rooting for her.
Hopefully she will be invited to interview.
I thought they selected 10-15 but not all accept.
http://www.honorscollege.pitt.edu/chancellors-scholars
I put our tree up this morning too. DD 18 was so happy when she got home. She called me at work!
Our school has finals right before winter break. So next Wed-Fri are 1/2 days. Then when we return we have Jan Term which is 2 weeks of fun classes. Unless you have AP’s. Those still meet during Jan Term. We also get the first 3 Fridays off to go skiing. Oh and homecoming/winter ball is the first Saturday. I like it because it gives them a break but they hit the ground running once jan term is over.
There are no finals at our school. Not good for kids who depend on finals to pull up grades; S18 was his grades drop 2nd and 4th quarters last year because he wasn’t used to having to turn stuff in toward the end of the semester. S16 said he probably wouldn’t have graduated without final exams to pull up his English grades.